You won’t have even bothered to check me out. I was one of the last to get round the
Cardiff Half Marathon. Walked most of it. Call myself a runner? What a cheek.
But the Cardiac Nurse will have smiled to herself when she sees I got round because
I am one of hers. I’m still on Planet Earth because she told me bluntly I would die if I
did not accept a pacemaker.
So I did.
And I’ll share what I have learnt in the last eighteen months.
Firstly, the pacemaker hasn’t stopped me knowing that things aren’t the same with
my heart as they were. I’d worked so hard on trying to diminish the odds of dying
from a heart attack.
My student doctor son had told me a long time back that there was research that
suggested if you trained your heart systematically over a period of years to work at
the top end of its limits, it would develop extra arteries to augment its blood supply.
Was that true or false? Had he told me that on April Fools Day? I can’t remember but
I do know that I used to run a lot and I loved running. I loved the feeling when you
kick in and you get that extra pace and the wind feels as if it is rushing past your face
and where do you stop and the universe begins. If there were any extra arteries
available, I’d worked for them.
Was I good? Didn’t start running till I was in my fifties, so I don’t really know the
answer to that. Doctor son had been the 100 m member of the county team,
explosive power, stunning to watch, just don’t blink or you’ll miss it. Would I have had
the same explosive power? Possibly but it’s too late now to deal in what-ifs.
The reality is that I still want to feel that wind against my face. I don’t want to stop
taking on challenges. So I must learn to maximise my body-pacemaker combination.
Lesson number one, pacemakers. They can be set to stop your heart’s resting rate
dropping below a certain value. My resting heart rate had been 42 bpm and I was so
proud of it. We all know athletes boast about their low resting heart rates. I had an
athlete’s heart beat.
Now my heart is not allowed to go below 59 bpm
Lesson number two, pacemakers. They can be set to stop your maximum heart rate
going over a certain value. So there is absolutely no point in encouraging me to dig
in because it is obvious I only need a short burst of energy and I’ll get over the finish
line in style and a bit quicker. My pacemaker will say no.
Lesson number three, pacemakers. You can ask for both the resting rate and the
maximum heart rate to be tweaked. In my case, I asked for the resting rate to go
down a little bit. I’ve been a yogi since I was in my twenties and my Guru used to talk
about us having an allocated number of breaths and an allocated number of heart
beats. And so for longevity, you improved your chances if you naturally breathed at a
slow rate.
Lesson number four, pacemakers. What should your maximum heart rate be? If you
have done any training in the world of exercise you will have heard the formula, it
should be 220 – your age. So in my case, that was going to be 220-76. I reckon that
is 144 bpm. But they took pity on me and set my maximum more like 150 bpm and at
the moment, there’s been another tweak and I’m able to get to 160 bpm. There is
another algorithm that they can use for athletes but I haven’t bothered to find out
about it.
Lesson number five, breathlessness. This is silly, I can keep going on a Half
Marathon. I can complete a Half Marathon, don’t you understand? But if I go upstairs
to fetch a book without taking my time, I’m going to be completely out of breath by
the time I am upstairs and I may well have to hold on to the window sill while I catch
my breath again.
And I can’t even put one sock and one shoe on without being breathless and having
to rest before I put the other sock and shoe on.
How do you ask a doctor for help with breathlessness when you are wearing the
latest local 10 K Finishers T-shirt? Answer. You don’t. You feel too much of a fraud.
But there’s a reason. So on to the next lesson
Lesson number six, pacemakers. Did you know the latest pacemakers can be
tweaked to have their rate of response time altered. The usual setting is 30 secs.
Mine is now tweaked to 20 secs (tweaked this week) and today I realised I wasn’t
out of breath at the top of the stairs. And thinking about it, I put both socks and shoes
on this morning without a rest. Hurray. Gather I can ask to have the rate of response
tweaked to 10 secs. We’ll see.
Lesson number seven, massages. Yes, this has caught me. It was only a facial but
the beauty therapist also liked to massage my shoulders. Firm and strong, kneading
out the tension. Should have made a fuss at the start about my pacemaker, because
it should have been allowed a magic circle around it where strong, caring hands
were prohibited. Mercifully it all settled down but it had moved the pacemaker a little
in its pocket inside me. So be warned.
Lesson number eight, running. Yes, I’ve got there. The first day I did a Parkrun after
the no running regime until everything has had time to heal rule, I was fascinated
that when after I looked at my Garmin, my maximum heart rate was exactly what the
pacemaker would allow me to do. It had stayed at the maximum bpm for the moment
that upper value was reached until the run was completed.
Lesson number nine, running. Ah! Could I actually get a better time if I could manage
to keep just below the maximum heart rate I’m set to? That might seem
counterintuitive but I have discovered that if I start fast, I haven’t a quick enough rate
of response and more to the point I’m experiencing breathlessness. I have to slow
down.
Lesson number ten, running or jeffing? Which will get me round fastest? Initially I
thought the optimum had to be to run up to the maximum heart rate and then
maintain that running pace which would in theory keep the heart rate at its maximum
value. But actually, I’m not convinced. I appear to be able to do an explosive run to
reach the maximum level, accept the breathlessness is forcing me to walk. Walk until
I have regained my breath and then run again as fast as I can to reach the maximum
level and repeat.
Lesson number eleven, old age. Huge sigh. Who wants to admit to old-age? But it
happens. And what worked quite well last year, isn’t working quite as well this year
despite the pacemaker. And then the vicious circle kicks in, takes longer to run a
distance, time constraints, so don’t run as far, weight gains, harder for the body to
move the heavier body around, even less moving the body around and round we go.
(or should it be grow)
Lesson number twelve, accept yourself for what you are and where you are on the
path of life. Be proud of all the things you can still do and enjoy doing them.
That late arrival at the finish line was actually very pleased that for yet another year,
she could boast that she had done the Cardiff Half. She was not slow. She was not
alone. She had her friend, her pacemaker inside her.